Updates and changes

This was a week of changes at the paper. Not huge stuff, but enough that some of you may have noticed a few things are different.
First, we added “S/he,” a new column written by the local YWCA. It ran on July 8 of this week but going forward, it’s going to print on the first Tuesday of the month.
Our columnists are good and they work hard to provide you with interesting ideas each week. Adding someone new doesn’t mean we’re cutting someone we already have, but we try to provide a diversity of voices. While we have great writers we do have a lot of folks who share the same world- view. The YWCA brings a new perspective to the paper and I think many readers will ben- efit from hearing their point of view.
Every columnist has their own con- stituency and I’m confident the YWCA will find a welcoming audience. Even if they’re not what you think you like to read, I encourage you to do so anyway. We all ben- efit from hearing different opinions. I’m genuinely excited to have them contribut- ing to us.
We also made a change to the daily police logs. Several readers asked us to start including block numbers (or intersections) with the calls. I think there are good arguments for and against the practice but I said upfront that we would listen to reader feed- back and make changes accordingly. Readers asked for the change so we made it. If we begin to hear counter-arguments in the coming weeks I will give those equal weight and we can always revise the policy down the line.
We also wrote a different kind of City Council follow-up this week, again at reader behest. We received calls and emails asking for a general roundup of the meeting in addition to the more in-depth follow-ups. The story we ran on July 10 covered the who, what, when and where of the meeting but it does not preclude additional stories in the coming days about specific issues.
If the rundown is useful to readers and worth the space in the paper, we’ll continue writing them after each meeting. We’re open to hearing feedback.
In the coming months we’re hoping to add a couple of additional regular columns and we’re always open to feedback about the work we do. Feel free to let us know if there’s a topic, or angle to a story that you’d like to see in the paper. Send me an email at edi- tor@smdp.com.
— Matthew Hall